more on flora and fauna and question about Multitran

[nataliek at UALBERTA.CA]

I am a fan of Will Ryan's work and I agree with him that things can  
get quite complex.  When writing about folk medicine, I had the  
advantage of having talked to village herbalists.  Thus, I knew what  
the various plants looked like, what their various uses were, how  
their medicinal properties were activated, so to speak, etc.  This  
made it much easier to find English equivalents.  In this regard, I  
very much recommend the 2 volume "A Modern Herbal," which is actually  
not modern at all but an old English source book republished by Dover.  
  I think this book is wonderful and I was able to find the English  
equivalents of the various plants I was writing about in it.  I was  
pleased and charmed, for example, to discover that liubiistok is  
called lovage in English.

Now about translating flora and fauna - I was quite excited when  
someone suggested Multitran.  But, when I tried it, I was quite  
disappointed.  Translations for the most obvious items came up, but  
the more esoteric terms were just not part of the database.  Has  
anyone else tried Multitran and have others had better results?

Natalie Kononenko
Kule Chair of Ukrainian Ethnography
University of Alberta
Modern Languages and Cultural Studies
200 Arts Building
Edmonton, Alberta, Canada T6G 2E6
Phone: 780-492-6810
Web: http://www.arts.ualberta.ca/uvp/

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